Home Sweet Home

Every good superhero needs a good headquarters. In comic books, there have been many secret bases that represent the themes of characters. Here is The Panel Biter's Top 5 Headquarters!

#5. Planet Oa

Home to The Green Lantern Corps and featuring living quarters, training facilities, prison cells, and dining halls. This planet was civilized by The Guardians of The Universe, but is populated by the unlimited amount of Green Lanterns throughout the universe. One of it's more charming attractions is The Central Power Battery, which is the source of all the Green Lantern's power. One human Green Lantern-Guy Gardner-runs a restaurant on Oa called "Guy's Place" which serves Earthling/American foods and alcoholic beverages. This base best represents the sheer mass of the GLC, seeing as how an entire planet is their base of operations.

#4. Asteroid M

When the mutant menace Magneto was founding his Brotherhood of Mutants, he secretly began constructing a lair on a crashed asteroid by using his magnetic powers. Magneto magnified his magnetic powers to magnetically push his asteroid back into space, giving his group of mutants a headquarters out of humanity's reach. Several incarnations later and Cyclops would request Magneto to lift the crashed asteroid out of the ocean and turn it into a new island for mutants called "Utopia". If the mere thought of an asteroid base isn't cool enough, the fact that it houses a civilization of mutants-similar to another mutant base called Genosha-is a really interesting idea. Asteroid M represents Magneto and the mutant population's distance from humanity and ironically the segregation they avoid.

#3. The Watchtower

After their dinky Hall of Justice, The Justice League stepped up their game and created a satellite base called The Watchtower. How? Well, when you have the combined wealth of Batman, Green Arrow and Mister Terrific added to the strength of Superman and Martian Manhunter, there isn't much you can't create. This base keeps tabs on every part of Earth, so that no nation goes unchecked, again this plays to the idea that The Justice League does not choose sides, that they protect all of Earth. Able to house seven to an unlimited amount of superheroes, walking in The Watchtower is a great achievement for aspiring heroes. This base also represents the god-like nature of The League as they float above the planet, looking down at the people they aim to preserve.

#2. Batcave

Well, this was obvious. The Batcave is as much a part of Batman as Alfred, The Batmobile and Gotham itself are. At first, this cave was dark, empty, and only housed the creatures Bruce Wayne chose to decorate himself as, but over time it grew to feature advanced computers, trophies of Batman's victories, an armory of weapons, armors and vehicles, and vaults containing the previously worn uniforms of Batman and his sidekicks, with Jason Todd's uniform holding the strongest significance. He has many smaller caves throughout Gotham City, he even has another cave dug under the Batcave that houses last-ditch equipment he would never use otherwise. It has changed over the years, but the cave will remain a representation of Batman's empty life filling with experiences both victorious and tragic. It is also the ultimate "man-cave".

#1. Fortress of Solitude

Superman's Fortress of Solitude-like The Batcave-chronicles The Man of Steel's world and adventures. It can only be accessed by Superman either via computer scans or a giant golden key and inside it contains service robots, Superman duplicate robots, alien computers, Kryptonian archives kept in crystals, statues of allies, an armory of alien weapons, a lens into the extra-dimensional prison called The Phantom Zone, a cosmic anvil Superman uses to create small Suns, a zoo comprised of endangered  alien creatures, the shrunken and bottled city of Kandor, and the very spaceship Superman was delivered to Earth in all those years ago. Only Superman's closest allies have entered the Fortress, and its origins come in many different forms. Above all, The Fortress represents Superman's escape from the world around him. That within this base he is neither the alien Kal-El or the human Clark Kent, he is simply the guardian known as Superman, and this fortress contains the fruits of his labor. I put The Fortress before the Batcave because Superman obviously has the cooler stuff! Anyone can buy a giant penny!

Surprisingly, the percentage of superheroes with definable bases is lower than the heroes who don't. I guess not everyone can afford such ridiculous mansions of heroism. Headquarters account for the character's legacy, they reflect the kind of person the character is and when these bases are destroyed it is often played as the perfect instance of a hero's privacy and security being risked, making for relatable reactions. Given the contents of these bases, some heroes might be more possessive than we thought. Thanks for reading!

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